Poll: Majority calls surge in women running for Congress a good thing

This year’s midterms have been dubbed the Year of the Woman as a record-breaking number of women wage campaigns for Congress, and a strong majority of Americans say that’s a good thing, according to new polling out Wednesday.

A survey from Pew Research found that 61 percent of adults considered the record-breaking number of female candidates to be a good thing, with just 5 percent of those surveyed who said it’s a bad thing. A third of those polled said it was neither a good nor bad thing.

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More than 500 women filed to run for Congress in 2018, according to the Rutgers Center for Women and Politics, blowing past the previous record of 298 women who filed to run in 2012.

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Of women who have filed to run for Congress, 220 have advanced in primaries and another 80 were still awaiting primaries before voters went to the polls on Tuesday.

These numbers include more than 80 female incumbents running for reelection or House members running for the Senate.

Women in general were slightly more likely than men to see the surge as a positive, by 68 percent to 54 percent, while the partisan split was wider. Twice as many Democrats as Republicans were likely to view the increase in female candidates positively, according to the Pew survey.

Despite agreement that electing more women could be a positive development, respondents were less sure whether having more women in Congress would make it easier for lawmakers to deal with the country’s problems or improve the tone of political debates or transparency.

Nearly 4 in 10 respondents said that sending more women to Washington would result in Congress’ doing a better job of dealing with the country’s problems, but most said they didn’t feel that more women would make a difference in any of those areas.

When asked in an open-ended format what they would attribute the uptick in female candidates to, 1 in 5 adults gave responses that indicate “it’s time for a change because the people who have been in charge, particularly men, haven’t done a good job,” according to an analysis from Pew. Fewer said that it was a result of societal advancements for women, and even fewer said that the surge was a result of Donald Trump’s presidency, the #MeToo movement and Hillary Clinton.

The Pew survey was conducted by phone from June 19 to July 12 among 4,587 adults in the U.S. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.4 percentage points.